Comptroller Combs and SurveyMonkey

State Comptroller Susan Combs trumpeted a survey Tuesday showing – as she wrote in the forward to a 15-page report – that a mere 3.4 percent of employers surveyed believe the Affordable Care Act will be good for their business.

Nearly two-thirds said federal health care is bad for business, her office reported. A total of 12.5 percent of respondents have reduced staffing due to health care reform. More than half expect higher costs due to federal health care reform.

But don’t look for a margin of error or other scientific underpinnings.

It’s not a scientific survey, as Combs freely acknowledged at her news conference with the heads of the Texas Association of Business (Bill Hammond) and National Federal of Independent Business/Texas (Will Newton).

Her poll was conducted online by SurveyMonkey (for $300 a year, she said, her office gets unlimited surveys).

About 21,000 members of the Texas Association of Business and NFIB were emailed to see if they would like to participate.

A total of 919 did so during the time the survey was posted, from Dec. 6 to Jan. 10.

That’s out of about 448,000 businesses in Texas, Combs said.

Combs’ press release emphasized that “more than 900 owners of large and small businesses responded to the survey” and referred to the 15-page report that’s replete with graphics and photographs.

At the news conference, she called the survey “a useful tool to gauge sort of business confidence, business attitude. It’s useful to us, at least, to think about what risks they are willing to take, and they seem risk-averse.”

“There is no limit if this is constitutional as to what the federal government can tell a business to do,” Hammond said, adding later, “Based on this survey, there’s no other conclusion that one can draw other than that Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, has put a damper on hiring at a time when the federal government should be doing everything to increase hiring.”

Newton voiced concern that the law “makes an employee now a liability instead of an asset in many cases. You don’t want to put pressure on hiring.”

But Newton also said that concern over health care isn’t new for the small businesses that make up his group.

NFIB surveys members annually on problems and priorities: “For 20 straight years … affordable health care has been the No 1 issue. It’s a bad situation that needs to be addressed. It just doesn’t need to be addressed like this.”